At 3 am these last few nights, the streets round here have echoed to a series of brief, hoarse barks. You might think it some kind of dog, and you’d be right: it is a fox, or rather a vixen*, barking, either to advertise her presence to males, or it seems to hurry her cubs along.

What the urban foxes live on is easy enough to discover: anyone who incautiously leaves out a bin bag for collection overnight, finds it ripped to shreds in the morning, the inedible wrappers scattered about the street, any juicy bits of meaty leftovers or chicken carcases devoured.

The foxy ladies aren’t averse to a bit of motoring, either, or at least to clambering all over cars to have a good look at something. As to whether the vixens are fashionable or chic, I’ll leave that to the dog foxes to decide.

* I suppose this odd-seeming word for a female fox has some connection to German Füchse(n), vixen, via Old English.